Natural killer cells in acute myeloid leukemia patients: from phenotype to transcriptomic analysis

Chemotherapies allow complete remission in more than 50 % of patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), however, with frequent relapse. This suggests that residual leukemic cells may escape to chemotherapy and immune system. Natural killer (NK) cells from AML patients (AML-NK) have a weaker natural cytotoxicity-activating receptors (NCRs) expression than NK cells from healthy donors (HD-NK). Coding genes for NCR1/NKp46, NCR2/NKp44 and NCR3/NKp30 are located at different loci on two different chromosomes; however, their expression is tightly coordinated. Most NK cells express either high (NCRbright) or low levels (NCRdull) of all three NCRs. This suggests the existence of negative/positive regulation factor(s) common to the three receptors. In order to find transcription factor(s) or pathway(s) involved in NCRs co-regulation, this study compared the transcriptomic signature of HD-NK and AML-NK cells, before and after in vitro NK cells culture. Microarrays analysis revealed a specific NK cells transcriptomic signature in patients with AML. However, in vitro NK cells expansion erased this signature and up-regulated expression of central molecules of NK functions, such as NCR, NKG2D and also ETS-1, regardless of their origin, i.e., AML-NK vs HD-NK. ETS-1 transcription factor was shown to bind to a specific and common region in the NCRs promoters, thus appearing as a good candidate to explain the coordinated regulation of three NCRs. Such results are encouraging regarding in vitro AML-NK cytotoxicity restoration and provide a new conceptual support for innovative cellular therapy based on in vitro NK cells expansion before their reinfusion in AML patients.